Currently, building occupants use alarms mounted or hung inside their homes to identify and to indicate various types of emergencies, such as fire, smoke, and dangerous levels of carbon monoxide or radon. Some of these alarms are capable of detecting multiple threats. In the most basic installation, conventional alarm systems provide one-way communication: the alarm produces an audible signal (typically, a loud siren) heard by the human occupant, and the occupant responds appropriately, for example, by leaving the home.
More advanced home protection systems integrate the alarm units within a building with an off-site professional monitoring service. With such a third-party monitoring service, the activation of the alarm triggers an inquiry by the monitoring service and, if necessary, a call to emergency service providers (e.g., the local fire department). To secure these protective services, the building occupants must pay a monthly premium. These services are primarily concerned with the protection of the building and its human occupants. Thus, one objective of the present disclosure is to provide a building occupant protection system that requires no monthly premiums to summon emergency services, if needed.
Many households have domesticated animals, such as dogs and cats, as pets. These pets may live indoors, outdoors, or both. In some instances, the pet may wear a collar that confines its movements to a certain geographic perimeter. This functionality, which may be implemented by means of buried perimeter fences or other means, is referred to herein as “perimeter control.” Perimeter control prevents the pet from roaming into unsafe areas, such as the street, where the pet could become injured. Perimeter control may also be used to confine the pet's movements to a certain area of a yard (for example, away from a garden or pool).
More than just providing perimeter control, a commercially available product called the “TAGG THE PET TRACKER®” provides a service for tracking the location of a pet through a GPS chip on its collar. For a monthly service fee, the pet's location is communicated to the owner's cellular telephone, and the service can provide specific information on the pet's whereabouts and/or activity level. However, the collar must be removed with regular frequency to recharge the battery. Moreover, the GPS chips in these collars work best when the pet is outside the home, which is not usually the case for pets that are primarily kept indoors.
While owners want to keep their pets safe, pets (particularly dogs) feel a similar loyalty to their owners. Pets can provide owners with a sense of security, since even dogs with no special training can function as “watchdogs.” Specifically, dogs have a desire to protect their owners and often exhibit a tendency to warn them (by barking) in the event of an emergency, such as an intruder or a fire.
Some pets have a greater sense of threats to their owners or become lonely in their owner's absence, causing them to bark repeatedly. In these cases—especially when the home has nearby neighbors—the pet owner may train his pet to bark less often by using a collar with a behavior correction mechanism, such as a collar that provides small electric shocks when barking is detected. Other types of collars may provide other disincentives (i.e., by spraying bad-smelling liquids), when the pet exhibits a behavior that owners wish to correct. As referenced herein, such collars will be referred to as including “behavior control features.”
One commercially available product called the iPETS® mobile device dog trainer allows owners to use their cellular telephones or tablets to control the vocal communication discourager via a Bluetooth® connection. Additionally, the iPETS® training system can be used for perimeter control, by notifying the owner of the pet's location outside a preset perimeter and by applying a behavior correcting stimulus to the pet. Unfortunately, there is no interaction between this collar and a home alarm system, which identifies a threat.
If multiple occupants (including pets) are present in the home at the time of the emergency, valuable time may be lost, while one person searches for the other occupants. Thus, another objective of the present disclosure is to provide a building occupant protection system in which a human occupant may relay, or broadcast, his voice through the alarm(s) of the system to notify other occupants of the need to evacuate. Yet another objective of the present disclosure is to provide a building occupant protection system, which utilizes devices associated with the human and/or animal occupants create two-way communication between the system and the devices, thereby allowing the system to determine the occupants' locations and to assess the likelihood of the devices being in the immediate possession of the occupants. A still further objective is to provide a system that broadcasts or announces the location of the human and/or animal occupants, once determined, thereby facilitating their rescue by other occupants or first responders.
While traditional alarm systems use primarily audible sirens or noises to notify the building occupants of a threat, other alarm systems that rely on visual cues (such as flashing lights from the alarm units) have been created for persons who are deaf or hearing-impaired. Some alarms include a transmitter that communicates with a keychain or other small hand-held device, which includes a receiver. These products are not wholly satisfactory or practical for each circumstance, particularly in situations where one occupant may have hearing challenges and other occupants may not. A building occupant protection system that communicates in a variety of ways with all of the human occupants would be useful. Thus, an objective of the present disclosure is to provide a building occupant protection system that employs audible signals and visual signals, as well as verbal status reports and direct communications between the system and a device (such as a cellular telephone) associated with the building occupant. A further objective of the present disclosure is to provide a building occupant protection system that a human occupant can override, in the event of a nuisance alarm.
Traditional alarm systems often lack the sophistication to determine when a nuisance threat has escalated into a major threat to the safety of the building occupants. For example, toast crumbs in a toaster may produce smoke, which, when detected by an alarm unit, may be considered a nuisance. However, if the crumbs catch fire, and the fire spreads from the toaster oven throughout the kitchen, a major threat arises. Thus, an objective of the present disclosure is to provide a building occupant protection system that is capable of summoning emergency service personnel, if not manually overridden. A further objective of the present disclosure is to provide a building occupant protection system that is capable of detecting an escalating threat and summoning emergency service personnel, even if the human occupants have previously chosen to override the alarm.
One challenge with many traditional alarms that operate primarily on battery power is the need for the occupants to test the system and to periodically replace the battery. Thus, an objective of the present disclosure is to provide a building occupant protection system in which the system is capable of performing a self-test. Yet another objective of the present disclosure is to provide a building occupant protection system, which allows the human occupant to temporarily postpone the system test to a more convenient time.
These and other objects of the present building occupant protection system will be apparent from a review of the following detailed description and the appended drawings.